On a day in early June in 1950, a 12-year-old boy stood in the front row of the stands on the third-base side of Rickwood Field. The players were on the field, going through their pre-game drills.

The boy was in the company of Walter Simpson, an old man.

Mr. Simpson was a longtime fan of the Double-A baseball club known as the Birmingham Barons. He knew the players, and they knew him. Years earlier, when the boy had been only three and four years old, Walter Simpson and his wife had cared for him in their home, while the boy's mother worked as a waitress. It was a commercial child-care arrangement that, over time, had become much more. The old man and his wife still thought of the boy as their grandson.

Mr. Simpson beckoned the Barons' starting pitcher, Johnny Mackinson, over to the stands, and introduced him to his "grandson."

The boy asked Mackinson for his autograph, and held out his book. In the book, there were autographs of many famous baseball players: Ted Williams' name was in there, and Joe DiMaggio's. Bob Feller, too! But these names were on 3 x 5 index cards, and they had been gathered long-distance by the boy, who had written fan letters to the players.

He would mail a letter to the famous player, requesting his autograph, and would include within it the 3 x 5 card and a self-addressed, stamped return envelope. Most of the time -- not always -- the player would sign the card and return it as requested.

Sometimes, a "stamped" signature would be received by the boy, suggesting that the player's wife, or a secretary, had substituted an impersonal rubber stamp for the player's personal signature.

When this happened, the boy would pretend that he didn't notice that it was only a rubber-stamped signature. Maybe it wasn't. Maybe it just looked like a rubber stamp.

Maybe that really was Joe DiMaggio's personally signed name, there, in the red ink. It's possible that it was.

But that day, at Rickwood Field in Birmingham, it was different. The boy could actually see that uniformed baseball player, Johnny Mackinson, signing his name in the book! Sure, he was only a minor league player, but he was the starting pitcher that day for the Birmingham Barons! And they were Double-A! Lots of Barons players made it to the major leagues! Jim Piersall had played there! And Walt Dropo!

And Johnny Mackinson was a good pitcher, too! Mr. Simpson had said so.

Mackinson had a baseball in his hand -- the same one he'd been using to warm up on the sidelines. After he signed the boy's book, he signed the baseball, too, and while looking away and pretending nonchalance, he surreptitiously slipped it to the boy.

Wow! A genuine autograph by the starting pitcher, on an Official Southern League baseball!

Wow!

And Johnny Mackinson did make it to the majors, too. He pitched in one game, in 1953, for the Philadelphia Athletics in the American League. He only pitched to five batters, giving up one hit in one-and-a-third innings of relief.

You can look it up in the Baseball Encyclopedia. No matter how brief an appearance by a player in a regular-season major league ball game, the event is faithfully recorded, forever, in the Encyclopedia of Baseball. There aren't many details in the book. It doesn't say whether Johnny's game was pitched in April or in September. He didn't win the game, or lose it, but he made that brief appearance and was "immortalized" in the meticulous records maintained by Major League Baseball.